While people are talking about android phones, I thought i'd mention a nice little android tablet that I just bought. It's a 7" Ainol Novo 7 Aurora. Cost me $239 delivered from an ebay seller here in Melbourne. I ordered it last Tue, and arrived last Thu. I could have bought it direct from China for about $160 but it would have taken 3 or 4 weeks to arrive. There are also cheaper models starting from about $100, with slower CPUs and without the IPS screen. It runs Android "Ice Cream Sandwich", 4.03 No cyanogenmod[1] yet, but there is an active user & dev community[2], and a number of replacement firmware images for it. I first heard about it on whirlpool[3] The firmware image i'm using[4] has a known-to-be-buggy touchscreen driver, but i'm happy with the tablet so far. The touch problems will be fixed soon enough (supposedly fixed in the current version), and i'll eventually install CM9 on it when that becomes available. There is also a Gingerbread (android 2.3.x) image for it which apparently works perfectly and gives a much longer battery life...i haven't decided whether I want to try that yet. speaking of battery life, installing SetCPU or similar is essential - the kernels in all current ROMs have the CPU freq set to "performance" mode. need to set it to "on demand". It doesn't have the polished build-quality of an Apple or Samsung or HTC etc product (it's plastic and obviously cheaply-made), but it's cheap, and the specs are good. Specs: CPU Many Core Allwinner A10 1.2GHz, 1GB DDR3 RAM GPU Mali 400 512MB ROM 1.0GB OS Android 4.0 Display 7.0 inch, capacitive 5-point IPS touch screen, 1024*600 pixels Memory 1GB ROM, 1GB RAM, 8GB or 16GB storage memory, support MicroSD card that can expand up to 16GB G-senosr Yes, 3-way support WIFI 802.11b/g/n Loudspeaker 1W*2 Microphone Support, High-sensitivity input OTG Can connect U Disk, Multiple Partitions HD etc. USB external devices USB High Speed USB2.0 Charger DC input, 5V--2.0A power adapter (can also charge from USB port) Battery 3700mah Ports 1 x TF card port; 1 x MINI USB port; 1 x MINI HDMI port; 1 x 3.5mm earphone port Size 189 x 123 x 9mm Weight 313g Wifi-only, no 3G....but it has a USB OTG port so you can plug in a 3G adaptor if you want. [1] http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=20032481&mode=linear#post20... http://androtab.info/arm/allwinner/ [2] http://www.slatedroid.com/forum/280-ainol-novo-7-aurora/ [3] http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1848903 [4] http://www.slatedroid.com/topic/29280-rom-novo-7-essential-clean-rom-v06-for... I'm running v0.5, an alpha version, at the moment. v0.6 supposedly fixed the touch problems. I'll probably upgrade today. craig PS: I was tempted by a 10" tablet, but a) IMO they're still too expensive, and b) 7" is a better size for my primary use of it as an ebook-reader to replace my sony prs-650. with fbreader installed and configured to use my calibre opds server, it's far better than the sony. e-ink displays are nice to read but too slow....and i don't mind reading on an LCD display with the brightness turned down. -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>